• montage •

Meaning: 1. An artistic composition created from bits and pieces of other objects, such as a picture made up of pieces from other pictures. 2. (Motion pictures) The selecting and arranging of scenes and transitions in putting together a motion picture.

Notes: No doubt because it mostly haunts the world of arts, today's Good Word has not wandered far from its original French pronunciation. The sequence GE in French is pronounced [zh]. However, the pronunciation often converts to English [j] in borrowed words like garage, and the suffix -age we see in mileage and footage. It can only be pronounced [zh] in today's word, though.

In Play: Today's Good Word probably is used most often to refer to a work of art: "The mural on the wall of the hall was a montage created from objects students left behind after graduation." The second sense of today's word is used figuratively to refer to a series of diverse objects or events: "Montague's life was a montage of colorful adventures encircling the globe."

Word History: The Proto-Indo-European word mont-/ment- seems to have referred to prominences, objects jutting out. It obviously went on to become the mount in mountain, and the verb meaning to get up on something high (mount a horse). In Latin it turns up as mentum "chin" and in Germanic languages it came to mean "mouth", as in German Mund, something located near the chin. Projections and prominences can be threatening, so Latin minax (minac-s) took on that meaning before English borrowed the Old French version of it, as menace. (The montage of information about today's Good Word was brought to prominence by a suggestion from Loren Baldwin.)

Montage is similar to collage, which is also from the French art world. From Wikipedia: Collage (From the French: coller, to glue, French pronunciation: ​[kɔ.laːʒ]) is a technique of an art production, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole.A collage may sometimes include newspaper clippings, ribbons, bits of colored or handmade papers, portions of other artwork or texts, photographs and other found objects, glued to a piece of paper or canvas. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years, but this technique made a dramatic reappearance in the early 20th century as an art form of novelty.The term collage derives from the French "coller" meaning "glue".[1] This term was coined by both Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in the beginning of the 20th century when collage became a distinctive part of modern art.[2]

In the visual arts bricolage is the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available, or a work created by such a process. The term is borrowed from the French word bricolage.

McGyver was a bricoleur. Remember how the T.V. hero assembled objects that happened to be available in the immediate environment to solve a problem? Perhaps bricolage is nothing more than a fancy way to say "improvisation?"

Bricolage spans the art genres. Many years ago, I had a stint working with the Boy Scouts. A key event for the troop was our annual bottle concert. I would put water in small mouth bottles, filling each to the level that would produce a certain note when air was blown over the mouth. Depending on the number of boy scouts in the troop, I would tune the different bottles to make a major scale. If I had enough members I would make two octaves. Then I would teach the boys how to play music by blowing over the right bottle at the proper time. A talented boy might be assigned two bottles that were not to be played simultaneously. We did four-part harmony and variations on songs. Although most of them had no music education, they learned quickly and enjoyed this musical bricolage. We were invited to perform for other Boy Scout troops and at the local schools.

I have a friend who is a famous (in Texas) sculptor of bricolage. His sculpting tools are a cutting torch and a welding machine. I could never get into that, especially since he is a fabulous sculptor of realistic art, which I admire greatly. I had another friend who sculpted with re-bars and fiberglass. I guess I am just too much of a realist to appreciate avant-garde art. This art reminds me that Picasso was a good realistic painter in his younger days. Although it is not usually noted in short biographies of Picasso, his art changed drastically when his first lover left him. He began experimenting is different art forms that I consider grotesque. I have also heard that in his later life he admitted to not liking his own work but said he had to pursue it because that is where the money came from. Truth of fiction?

and lest we forget, montage is the word used in french for the editing of movies, which of course is done by combining scenes in various orders to tell a story. often, the same shots can be combined in a number of different ways to tell different stories. something to think about as we go through our day? how could the various parts of our lives be reconfigured to produce different outcomes?

I know Picasso's line drawings. A dove was a frequent subject of these drawings. Most of them are impressive and I like them. Some of his abstract art is also beautiful. I never said Picasso was not a great artist. He just moved from beauty to grotesque ugliness as he aged, and that saddens me.